


And Try Me

by nagi_schwarz



Series: A Case of You [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 21:57:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14198517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the song comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, John/Rodney, Love Hurts (Incubus)"John in the aftermath ofYour Face Sketched on it TwiceandMade Your Bed, wherein Rodney is emotionally a teenager, Lorne surrenders old memories, and John isn't sure where he and Rodney stand anymore.





	And Try Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a McShep fic.

When it came to  _ don’t ask don’t tell, _ John was a master at obeying the strict letter of the rule. He hadn’t asked Lorne if he was anything but perfectly heterosexual, and Lorne hadn’t told him anything to contradict that. He’d just asked if John knew who Rodney’s first boyfriend was. Given that Rodney was a civilian and a Canadian to boot, his sexual orientation didn’t matter to the United States Air Force.

Nothing to see here.

Nothing to report.

But John couldn’t get it out of his head.

_ Lorne _ had been Rodney’s first boyfriend.

John and Rodney hadn’t talked much about their dating history, though John knew Rodney was bi and John was mostly gay despite having been married to a woman for a while. All Rodney had said about his first boyfriend was that he was a surfer and he’d been a high school student while Rodney was in college.

Which made sense, because Rodney had gone to college at sixteen.

Rodney said they’d broken up when Rodney had taken off for grad school and the boy had gone on to college.

Which also made sense, because Lorne had gone to the Academy. Not like he could have openly had a boyfriend there.

John couldn’t imagine what it had been like for Rodney and Lorne to run into each other after all these years. Had it been strange for them, like it had been for John when he’d run into Nancy one time in DC when he’d gone to face his charges for what happened with Holland? Or had the first time they’d seen each other been on that planet, while they were chasing Ford and had run into Ronon?

John remembered assigning Rodney to Lorne and hearing Lorne’s sarcastic  _ Lucky me. _ He’d assumed it was the usual soldier-scientist tension. As far as he knew Lorne and Rodney’s interaction had been strictly professional, like they barely knew each other.

And how well did they know each other? It had been almost two decades since they’d dated, and they’d been teenagers. People changed.

John kind of wanted to ask Lorne what Rodney had been like as a teenager.

Ever since that whole kerfuffle on M34-227, with Rodney locking AR-3 into a jumper and sending them back to Atlantis, Rodney had been acting strange. Distant. He seemed distracted and a little anxious.

Also, he seemed to be mightily pissed off at Chuck, which was usually Zelenka’s department, and kept yelling at him and complaining about him. Even Zelenka was confused.

John and Rodney were in the jumper bay, working on John’s favorite jumper (Jumper Two, nicknamed Unholy Hannah) when Rodney, who was teaching John some basic jumper repairs, turned away.

“Where the hell did you get that?”

John turned, startled, and saw Chuck lugging a surfboard toward one of the other jumpers.

Chuck turned, startled. “What? Oh, this? It’s Lorne’s. Today’s my Sunday, since you rearranged mine the other day, and also it’s his Sunday, and he said he’d teach me how to surf.” He was wearing board shorts and a t-shirt and a pair of sandals.

Rodney’s expression turned unreadable, but then the rest of Lorne’s team arrived, also in beach-worthy attire. Reed was carrying John’s surfboard; he’d asked to borrow it about a week ago.

“You surf, Doc?” Reed asked.

Rodney pressed his lips into a thin line, shook his head. Reed leaned John’s board against the side of the jumper, so Chuck did the same with Lorne’s, and then Lorne’s team and Chuck proceeded to pack beach-going supplies onto the jumper - towels, snorkels, fins, and several coolers and picnic baskets.

Rodney watched the entire procession in disbelief, and then several more people arrived, civilians, also with their own beach-going gear.

Lorne was the last to arrive.

“What’s going on?” Rodney asked.

“Beach trip to the mainland,” Lorne said, perfectly calm and casual. “For our Sunday.” He glanced at John. “I cleared it a month ago, sir. Jumper and all. But senior personnel will have radios just in case.”

“Beach trip?” John echoed. “How come you never planned one of those for the rest of us?”

Lorne raised his eyebrows, expression amused. “We don’t have the same Sunday, sir. I figured if other people wanted a beach trip they’d plan it themselves.”

John crossed the jumper bay, moving to stand beside Rodney, who had drifted toward Lorne’s surfboard haltingly, like he’d seen a ghost. He’d described his first boyfriend as a surfer kid. 

“Nice board,” John said, keeping his tone casual. “Your first?” He glanced at Lorne.

Lorne laughed. “What? No. Definitely not. I’m a lot bulkier than I was when I first started surfing, have had to adjust the volume of my board over the years or else I’d sink every time I climbed on, never catch a wave. I got my first board secondhand when I was, what, twelve?”

“I like the shape.” John reached out, traced the curve of it. “This is a pretty hardcore thruster. You must be pretty good.”

“I competed some as a kid,” Lorne said. “Ideally I’d have a funboard or a cruiser to teach with, but this is my baby.” He patted it fondly. “Did the paint job myself.”

John whistled appreciatively. It was marbled blue, green, and yellow, with an intricate henna-like design over top. “I had my gun shipped over because I never thought of going to the mainland much, just taking a jumper out to a pipeline and going for broke.”

Lorne smiled at him. “I hadn’t thought of that. That sounds like fun. I’d say we should do it sometime, but since we’re never on Sundays together…”

John nodded, still keeping cool and casual. Lorne sounded perfectly friendly, not at all as tense and pointed as he had back in the military command office a couple of days ago. John glanced at Rodney, who was still staring at the surfboard a little dazedly.

“Have fun, Major.” To Reed, John said, “Take good care of my board.”

“Yes, sir,” Reed said, patting it fondly.

Once everything else was in the jumper, Reed and Lorne laid out the surfboards carefully, and the passengers boarded. Rodney watched Lorne until he disappeared behind the rear hatch, and then, when John cleared his throat, Rodney swept past him and back to Unholy Hannah.

He didn’t say anything for the rest of the morning.

But he was twitchy, casting glares at everyone and sighing loudly.

Finally, at lunch time, Rodney marched to the mess hall, shoveled down a few forkfuls of food, and then marched over to Ops, where he elbowed Amelia aside and got on the radio.

“Sergeant Campbell, this is Atlantis. What’s your status? Over.”

Amelia cast him a puzzled look but recognized the mood he was in and scooted her chair back, hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

There was no response.

John stepped closer to Rodney, puzzled. Even though Chuck was a tech sergeant, everyone treated him like a civilian, and he basically was one. He only went offworld in the event of an evacuation. He’d been part of the first wave of the expedition. Being cooped up on the city all the time might have made him a bit stir crazy.

Although if this was his first real experience offworld besides emergency evacuation -

Rodney stabbed the transmit button again. “Sergeant Campbell, do you read? Over.”

There was the crackle of radio static. “Sorry, Atlantis, this is Dr. Ambrose. Chuck’s on the water - and he just wiped out again. Haha! Everything’s okay. Uh - five-by-five. Reed says to call it five-by-five.”

Rodney frowned. “Have Chuck check in with me once he’s done wiping out.”

Amelia raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

“Roger that,” Ambrose said, and her statement was punctuated by musical laughter before the transmission cut out.

Rodney turned and strode for the transporter.

John followed.

“Everything all right?” he asked Rodney.

“Fine.”

“You seem - tense.”

“I’m fine. Just - we need to get this jumper repaired. And you need to learn to do it in the rare event I’m not there to save your sorry behind.”

They were alone, so John nudged him and smirked. “My behind is sexy, not sorry.”

Rodney flinched away, eyes going wide. But then he said, “Right! Yes. Of course.”

Before John could call him on the blatant insincerity of his response, the transporter doors opened and they had to be on their best (read: most heterosexual) behavior possible.

They spent most of the day in the jumper bay together, pausing only for snacks or coffee. There was something comforting and almost domestic about being tucked in beside Rodney, trading tools with him, listening to his rambling explanations of jumper crystal circuitry and power grids, absorbing his warmth and being awash in his voice.

But the energy between them wasn’t quite right. Rodney was still anxious and tense, the kind of anxious and tense that usually accompanied an important deadline or otherwise looming doom.

John wanted to confront him about it, but there were other people in the jumper bay. Even though most of the techs and scientists in the jumper bay were civilians and probably didn’t care about what was between John and Rodney, they’d agreed: in this case (the case of John’s career and his position as the military commander of Atlantis), discretion was the better part of valor.

Over supper, Rodney rambled aimlessly, unloading everything he knew about jumpers onto John, which was useful. As smart as John was, he didn’t think for one second that he’d be able to remember everything Rodney was telling him, let alone be able to recall the important parts in the middle of an offworld emergency. 

Finally, while Rodney was pushing mashed tava root around on his plate, John leaned in and lowered his voice.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Fine,” Rodney said, a little too quickly and loudly. “I’m just fine. C’mon. We’d better get back to that jumper. Unholy Hannah isn’t going to optimize herself.” He scooped up his tray and started for the tray return line.

He’d forgotten his brownie.

John scooped it up, followed him to the tray return line, only he handed the little dessert plate to one of the KP Marines. The sergeant boxed it up for him in some tupperware, then took his tray. Rodney was already halfway to the mess hall doors, so John hurried to follow him, now genuinely concerned, because Rodney had barely eaten a thing, and his blood sugar would take a dip for the worse in about an hour.

Down in the jumper bay, they got back to work. Rodney wasn’t so distracted by whatever was bothering him that he didn’t let John try to do more tasks on his own, practice what he’d learned. Sure enough, an hour into their post-supper work, Rodney began to get cranky and grumbly and hungry.

“I am not being cranky.”

“Yes you are.”

“Okay. Fine. Maybe I am. Sometimes I’m a cranky person. What of it?”

“Well, you barely ate your dinner, so I’m not surprised,” John said.

Rodney narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying I brought this on myself?”

Instead of responding, John held out the little tupperware container. 

Rodney opened it cautiously, but his eyes lit up when he saw what was inside. He wolfed down the brownie in a few quick bites, then closed his eyes and hummed happily.

“There,” John said gently. “All better?”

“Better,” Rodney agreed.

But he was still a little anxious and jumpy while they worked. John was careful to maintain as professional a distance as possible between them, because every time he brushed against Rodney, Rodney flinched away, as skittish as a newborn colt. It wasn’t just professional caution, either. It was something else. John tested the reaction a few times, brushing against Rodney’s arm or shoulder as he reached for something from the toolbox.

Rodney wasn’t angry at him.

Was Rodney...afraid of him?

Hurt twisted in John’s chest. Something was wrong with Rodney, and they definitely needed to talk. John cleared his throat, leaned in to speak softly, but then the jumper bay door opened, and a jumper descended.

Of course. The beach-goers had returned.

The back hatch opened, and people disembarked, carrying towels and picnic baskets and even some plastic beach toys, like buckets and spades and trowels. They were talking and laughing, pinked and tanned from a long day in the sun. Reed emerged, bearing John’s surfboard very carefully. Lorne exited behind him, carrying his own surfboard, towel slung over one shoulder.

“How was the surf?” John asked.

Lorne turned to him with a dimpled grin. “Amazing, sir. You should definitely get out there on your next Sunday and try it. I’ll even plan it for you if you like.”

John huffed. “Funny, Major.”

“I’ll even rearrange my schedule to be on your Sunday and we can try that pipeline thing if you like.”

Now that was actually a tempting offer. Before John could inquire further into the possibility, Chuck emerged from the jumper, and Rodney pounced on him.

“You! You never radioed me back.”

Chuck recoiled, startled. “What? Radioed you back?”

“I made specific orders for you to radio me -” Rodney began.

“Whoa, McKay, what orders?” Chuck had his hands raised in surrender.

Dr. Ambrose ducked her head. “Sorry, Rodney, I totally forgot to tell him. We were all having so much fun - it must have slipped my mind.”

Rodney wheeled on her. “It  _ slipped your mind? _ How could you be so  _ stu -” _

“You never radioed again. I figured it wasn’t that important.” Ambrose hunched her shoulders.

Lorne stepped forward. “Doc, if it was a true emergency, we’d have radioed in or come back immediately. One of us had the radio at all times.”

“A true emergency?” Rodney’s voice rose, and he turned to Lorne, fury snapping in his gaze.

Something was wrong. John broke in.

“Rodney,” he said sharply.

Rodney turned to him. “I can handle this -”

“Why don’t you let Major Lorne and the rest get settled in. Then - Lorne, how about you bring my board back? And bring Chuck with you, and we can talk.”

Chuck looked confused and also irritated, but Lorne, ever the peacemaker, nodded.

The beach-goers, who’d all paused at the commotion, continued on their way once Lorne stepped away from John and Rodney, towing Chuck with him. A couple of Lorne’s teammates volunteered to stay behind and make sure the jumper was sand-free before they went back to their quarters.

John didn’t stick around. He issued a curt  _ as you were _ to the military personnel in the jumper bay, and the scientists followed. John tugged on Rodney’s wrist, then turned and headed for the transporter. Rodney trailed along behind him.

John made a beeline for the military command office.

“What are we doing here?” Rodney asked, but he stepped into the office anyway.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of whatever is going on between you and Chuck,” John said, “because it’s better for us to do it than for Elizabeth to get involved.”

Rodney’s expression turned sour, but he said nothing.

John sighed. “You’ve been weird since that whole  _ thing  _ on M34-227. What’s going on?”

Rodney looked away.

“Look, I know neither of us like talking. But something’s wrong.”

Rodney said nothing, tense beneath John’s gaze. They stood there in tense silence until the doors opened, and there was Lorne, still in civvies but not beach attire, John’s surfboard under one arm, Chuck behind him.

Lorne propped John’s surfboard up against the wall beside his desk, and the door slid shut behind him.

“You wanted to speak to us, sir?”

“Mostly Chuck,” John said.

“Me? What did I do? I checked with Amelia. There were no emergencies while I was gone,” Chuck said. He eyed John. “With all due respect, sir -”

“Chuck’s an innocent bystander in all this,” Lorne said. “He should be allowed to leave.”

Rodney’s shoulders were tight. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He fixed his glare on Chuck. “Chuck was deliberately insubordinate, and this matter should be dealt with now.”

Lorne actually stepped between Chuck and Rodney. “This has nothing to do with Chuck’s imagined insubordination. Let him go.” He flicked his gaze at John. “Sir.”

And then Chuck’s eyes went wide. “Is this - is this about Rodney catching me at the club with - with -” He didn’t say the name, but judging by the way Lorne and Rodney both flinched, John knew who Chuck had been with at the club.

Chuck turned to Lorne. “But - I thought you’d broken up -”

“Sixteen years ago,” Lorne said flatly. “So really, you should be allowed to go.”

“That long ago?” Chuck echoed, puzzled. “From the way Rodney freaked out in the club -”

“Go,” John said, because Lorne was right. Chuck really had no place in this.

Chuck raised his eyebrows, and John nodded.

“Everyone will be perfectly professional from here on out,” John said, casting Rodney a look.

Rodney avoided his gaze again.

Chuck, expression skeptical, ducked out of John’s office.

As soon as the door was shut behind him, Lorne said, “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

John winced at the reminder of just how precarious a position he and Lorne were in. “No need to stand on formalities, Lorne.”

Lorne turned to Rodney. “If you’ve ruined things for me and Chuck, I swear -”

“Swear what?” Rodney asked, bristling. “Who are you going to tell?”

“You think you can make my life miserable with a couple of cold showers?” Lorne asked. “You want to go to war with the head logistics officer on this base? Because we can do that. My men will suffer cold showers and the entire science department - excluding the gate techs, of course - will be totally caffeine-deprived. Really, if you want to descend to the lowest levels of pettiness, I can do that. But I thought we were past that. You’re with Sheppard. Whatever stupid torch I was carrying is fully extinguished. We agreed to be professional, and we had been. And then you went crazy on M34-227 and you’ve been crazy ever since.”

“I told you,” Rodney said. “I’m still in love with you.”

All the air was sucked out of John’s lungs.

Lorne looked just as shocked as John felt. “No, you didn’t say that. All you said was that your memories were a little scrambled.” He stumbled back a step.

John lurched back into action. “Your memories are scrambled?”

Rodney’s expression turned hunted. “Beckett knows about it.”

“And he let you back on regular duty?” John asked.

“Well - he said it’d get better.”

“Obviously it hasn’t,” Lorne snapped. Then he took a deep breath. “Look, this doesn’t even really involve me. Take Merry to Carson and let him sort things out.”

Rodney’s eyes went wide. “You called me Merry.”

It was Lorne’s turn to look away. “Slip of the tongue.” He took another deep breath, met John’s gaze. “Really, this isn’t about me. Once McKay remembers the past sixteen years, however many years he’s had with you, everything will go back to normal. I should go. Check on Chuck.”

John held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Dismissed, Major.”

Evan inclined his head respectfully, turned, and swept out of the office. The door opened for him without a gesture. Just how strong a Gene carrier was he?

As soon as the door was closed behind him, John turned to Rodney. “Rodney, what’s going on?”

Again with that sour twist to his mouth, his gaze sliding away from John’s. “Like Major Lorne said, my memory’s a bit scrambled.”

“How scrambled?”

“I - don’t remember us. I mean, I do. Intellectually. But emotionally all I remember is - him.”

John sank back against his desk, gripping the edge tightly to steady himself. “How long were you together?”

“Two years.”

Longer than he and Rodney had been together. 

“Tell me what happened. On M34-227.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You nearly got yourself killed saving Lorne and his team.”

“I was confident that I’d survive, and I was right,” Rodney said.

“But you don’t remember what happened.”

“Not between the time I locked them in the jumper and when I woke up later.”

“And when you woke up later?”

Rodney told John what had happened, not just the technical aspects from his original debrief, about breaking into the old crashed jumper and cobbling together a radio to answer the call through the gate, but waking with no memory, and being driven to make it home by a desire to reunite with his beloved Evan. He described something that had been a mystery to John the entire time he’d known Rodney, the folded up coaster he kept in the back of the notebook that he took everywhere with him, the one he used to scribble down his genius ideas when he had them.

It was the goodbye message Evan had given him, when he’d issued that ultimatum about their relationship.

Rodney had kept it all these years.

Then in the infirmary he’d had it delivered back to Evan, a message, a  _ let’s talk _ and  _ I want you back,  _ only John had come to him, and Evan had walked in on them kissing, and he’d misunderstood Rodney’s message entirely.

And then apparently wandered off to the roving Atlantis nightclub that technically didn’t exist and hooked up with Chuck and broken Rodney’s heart all over again.

If that was how Evan had reacted to everything, apparently he hadn’t been nearly as over Rodney as he’d made it seem to John.

But Rodney still being in love with Evan and emotionally raw like a teenager and John’s heart breaking at the thought of losing him were small matters compared to the real issue: Rodney’s health.

“I’m not mad at you,” John said, because he wasn’t. “And I’m not mad at Lorne or Chuck. This isn’t anyone’s fault. But you need to get checked by Carson. Come on.”

Rodney nodded, expression miserable.

*

Of course, Elizabeth had to be alerted that her CSO wasn’t quite ready for active duty after all. Carson fretted, clucking his tongue at Rodney and chastising him for not following up on the issue of his scrambled memory.

“When you didn’t come back I thought you were fine. You cannae lie to me like this, Rodney. It could mean your life.” 

Elizabeth, John, and Radek stood by while Carson checked over Rodney with an Ancient medical scanner.

“Aye, there’s still some swelling,” Carson said. “You need to take it easy. I’m admitting you.”

Rodney tried to protest, but Radek was already on the radio, asking for all of Rodney’s favorite foods to be prepared and brought to the infirmary - but no coffee, per the doctor’s orders. 

“How long am I going to be stuck here?” Rodney asked.

“At least twenty-four hours,” Carson said. “I’ll be monitoring you closely.” Then he glanced at John, knowing, and asked Elizabeth and Radek to step aside with him so he could talk to them about Rodney’s prognosis and what preparations to make just in case.

John pulled the privacy curtain around Rodney’s cot.

“You’re going to be fine. You heard Carson. Just a day, to make sure the swelling goes down. Taking it easy will help you heal faster.” John didn’t sit on the edge of the mattress like he usually did, didn’t try to kiss Rodney. His skittishness over the last few days made total sense.

Then the curtain twitched to the side, and there was Lorne. Evan. Carrying a tray of all of Rodney’s favorite foods.

“I brought you decaf.” He looked perfectly calm and polite. He set the tray down beside the cot, turned, and left.

Carson returned, assured Rodney that he and his team were doing everything in their power to make sure Rodney was all right, and then he shooed John away so Rodney could eat and rest.

John headed back to his office, mind spinning.

What if Rodney wasn’t okay? What if his head injury killed him? Or if he never got his right mind back? What if he never remembered how much he loved John, how much John loved him?

Before they’d gotten together, John had been hesitant, had feared all the ways they could go wrong - death, kidnapping, discovery and John’s subsequent discharge, Rodney getting fed up with the secrecy and choosing someone who didn’t have to hide, one of them being promoted far away from the other. He’d never imagined this.

When John got back to his office, Lorne was already there, sitting at his desk, tapping away at his laptop.

“Why are you working? It’s still your Sunday.”

“Just emailing my family before the next databurst,” Lorne said. He glanced up. “McKay gonna be all right?”

“Yeah. Beckett’s keeping him overnight for observation.” John leaned against the edge of his desk, faced Lorne. “So...you and Rodney. For two years.”

“We were sixteen when we first met.”

“That’s young.”

“We were dumb kids.”

“And yet you’ve loved him all this time.”

Lorne met John’s gaze for a moment, then shrugged and looked away. “Went straight into the Academy. Haven’t really had anyone since then.”

“And yet - Chuck.”

Lorne flicked a glance up at John. “Well, I learned from the best.”

John had never intended to be a role model, though he knew the men and women he commanded looked up to him in one way or another.

“I figured if he’d moved on, well, I ought to as well.”

“But he wasn’t telling you he’d moved on. He was trying to tell you -”

“He risked for you what he was never willing to risk for me. You’re a hell of a commander and an even better airman, and I don’t even know you that well. I figured if you were worth that much to him, you must make him happier than I ever could, and he deserves that. To be happy. Not to ruin his own happiness because his head’s a little scrambled.”

“And what if what he wants is really you?”

Lorne shook his head. “We’ve both changed too much. He doesn’t know me anymore. And I don’t know him.” He finished typing, clicked his mouse, closed his laptop, and stood up. Then he picked up a sketchbook, held it out to John. “I figured if anyone ought to have this, it’s you.” Lorne started for the door. “Talk to me about going surfing next Sunday, and I’ll make things happen.”

John nodded absently, didn’t really hear the door close.

He stared at the notebook for a long time.

Then he flipped it open to the first page and stared.

At Rodney, sixteen years old, downright pretty, hair thick and wavy, sitting on a beach towel, textbooks and highlighters strewn around him, mouth pulled into a familiar thoughtful frown.

On the next page there was another sketch of Rodney, also studying on a beach towel, bent over his textbook, his face obscured from view. There were multiple studies of his mouth on the edges of the sketch.

There was a sketch of Rodney standing next to an old clunker of a car, the sand and the sea in the background.

And a sketch of Rodney wading in the breakers, his pants rolled up above his ankles.

Another sketch of Rodney, his hands graceful, expression alight like when he explaining something and excited.

The book was filled with sketches of Rodney - studying, standing, sitting, sleeping, wrapped in winter clothes, in a pair of board shorts, in jeans and a t-shirt.

Naked in someone’s bed, the sheets pooled at his waist.

There were an awful lot of those sketches, of Rodney sleeping.

John had seen him sleeping like that - on his stomach, exhausted. Sprawled on his back, contented. On his side, cuddled up with his pillow, sated.

Rodney McKay was beautiful.

John watched Rodney grow up, saw the shadow of stubble begin to appear on his face, the lines of his face become sharper and more adult.

Lorne’s skill as an artist at sixteen was phenomenal. Did he still draw?

What had he been thinking, bringing this sketchbook to Atlantis, let alone keeping it after all these years?

John closed the sketchbook, unable to look further, to see Lorne’s soul and love and dedication sketched out on those pages, in every line, and went to put it in his desk drawer.

Something fell out.

The folded-up coaster Rodney always kept in his notebook.

John unfolded it. The cartoony beer logo was for a brew he’d never heard of. He turned it over and stared at the sketch there - a map of Canada, and Rodney, two of him, one smiling, one asleep.

_ My my Merry. _

_ Not yours anymore,  _ John thought. _ And maybe not mine either. _

He tucked the coaster back into the sketchbook, tucked the sketchbook into his drawer, and he left the office, thought the lights out as he went.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the lyrics of the prompt song.


End file.
